Category Archives: Tutorials

Adding SSL to a new or existing Rails application isn’t really that difficult. If the website exists for a while and you want to move to https, then you must properly redirect (301) visitors to the new url. If it’s a new website, then it’s probably a good idea to use SSL from the start. (it’s must if you collect any kind of sensitive data from the users)

Assumptions : It’s a Rails 4 app, running with nginx, passenger and Ubuntu 14.04 Server. (preferably on VPS, or somehow you should be able to update nginx configs and so). For SSL certificate, I would recommend Comodo PositiveSSL Certificate from NameCheap @ $9 a year, unless you’ve a good reason to spend more on that.

SSL Setup

First, generate a key and then CSR for buying a SSL certificate. Enter the required info as required. Watch out for Common Name / FQDN field, it must match with the domain (in this case : example.com).

git is a distributedopen source version control system. If you’re not already familiar with git then read some free tutorials listed here and come back after you have some basic understanding to follow through the tutorial. Whether it’s a static website or a fun project, it’s usually a good idea to use a version control system such as git. Additionally, git can also help you in deployment and make your development workflow much easier and simpler.

Step #1. Server Setup

If you’ve not already selected a VPS then get one there on Digital Ocean or Linode. Make sure you select Ubuntu (preferably : 14.04 LTS) for the server OS. Otherwise, you may need to adjust few commands depending on the Linux distribution you’re using.

Now, update the DNS settings at the registrar and create two records – one for naked domain (e.g example.com) and other for www-version of the website (e.g www.example.com) – both pointing to the server IP. And, wait for the DNS to be propagated (few minutes).

Sinatra is a lightweight web development framework (a.k.a micro framework) written in Ruby. It’s a MVC framework (just like Rails) but more suitable for simple and small web projects or APIs (otherwise, you’d probably end up writing too much code, which could be done more easily in Rails, in case of complex web applications).

If you’re new to web development and you’ve just learned ruby then then you should start with sinatra. It’s much easier to learn and you can start creating something (ideally something useful) within hours. Create a simple web app and deploy to Heroku or your VPS using passenger. This article is all about deploying your Sinatra app to VPS.

Why passenger ?

For simple lightweight web applications (sinatra apps), I prefer passenger. You can easily run multiple applications on a single server without any extra configuration (good for small side projects). Later, you can move to unicorn (probably faster response cycle) or puma (lightweight, optimized for concurrency) or something else, if you really need to.

Getting a VPS

Before going through the steps, I assume you’ve already selected a VPS company, if not I would recommend Digital Ocean. (That’s a referral link and you’ll receive $10 credit – worth two months of free hosting) They’ve great plans starting at just $5 per month, well suitable for fun/side projects. For server operating system, select Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, otherwise, you may need to adjust few commands a little, depending on the Linux distribution. For memory and other requirements, 512 MB plan may be enough for a starting out, as you can always upgrade later if required.

Now ssh into the server, and make sure ssh keys are setup as as expected. Additionally, you can turn off password authentication for additional security, type sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config and disable password authentication by changing the value from yes to no. (PasswordAuthentication no)

Note : If you haven’t created any ssh key before (on your local computer), then run ssh-keygen to generate one.

Step 4. Deployment setup

Setting up nginx and passenger is fairly easy. Just make sure the ruby path is setup correctly in your nginx config. Type which ruby to get the ruby version and make sure that’s correctly specified at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. (just lookout for the lines that says passenger_ruby)

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf file (make sure it looks like this)

passenger_ruby /home/rkjha/.rbenv/shims/ruby;

Server config for nginx/passenger

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

Here is a sample config you can use. Replace example.com and username accordingly. (it also creates a 301 redirect for www version of your domain, you can change that if you want).

Now create a symlink for that config and reload the server to apply the new config.

Setting up git/bitbucket Add your project to git (if you’ve not done that already), create an account at bitbucket.org And create a repository (private unless you want the source code of your app to be available open/freely) there. You may need to upload the public key (server), go to repo’s settings and Add Deployment key there.

If you’ve not used git before then check out some free tutorials listed here and comeback later. Deploy using custom rake task You can use some deployment tools like Capistrano (probably overkill for a Sinatra app) or mina (a lightweight deployment tool). But here, I’ll keep things simple and just use a simple rake task to deploy the code.

Step 5. Deploy

You may also need to run bundle install on server, as the rake task is only fetching the latest files from bitbucket repo. Or you can add few lines there (Rakefile) to do that for you. I’ve tried to keep things as simple as possible or I’ll add that later.

If the deployment is successful you can add a DNS entry for your domain. (Make sure you also add an entry for www, so, the www.example.com will be redirected to example.com, without creating any confusion or duplicate issue in Search Engines)

OpenShift is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) from RedHat. It’s great for deploying web applications as you can setup/scale/manage apps quickly without any hassle, just like Heroku, but the OpenShift platform is available as a free and open source software, so you’re not locked in (you can install OpenShift on your server and create your own private PaaS if you want).

Step 1. OpenShift Setup

First of all, Create a free Account. You get 3 small gears (resource container/unit : one small gear is equivalent to 512 MB RAM and 1GB storage) for free. If you need more, you can upgrade to premium plans.

Install rhc tool

gem install rhc

Note : If you use rbenv for managing ruby then you also need to run `rbenv rehash`.

create token and upload public keys

rhc setup

And follow the instructions. Once the setup is completed, you can easily create/manage your apps using this client utility (rhc).

Just type :

rhc

to see available options. If you want to see all the cartridges (application environment e.g ruby, php, python etc) available, just type :

rhc cartridges

Create a Ruby on Rails App [openshift]
Run this command from the parent directory of your project (~/parent_directory/project) or it will create a directory inside your app.

Note : joblee is the name of the Rails app we’re going to deploy. So, replace it with the name of your app. And I assume you’re using Postgresql for database.

rhc app create ruby-1.9 -a joblee

Add database cartridge

rhc cartridge add postgresql-9.2 -a joblee

Add ‘pg’ to your Gemfile. And run bundle install. Although, you’ll receive database details in the end (above command) but it’s a better to use openshift environment variables in database.yml. So, update the database.yml accordingly. Something like this one : production config for database.yml (openshift)

Step 2. Preparing the application for deployment

Once the openshift is setup, move to your project directory and setup git push deployment for your app.

cd joblee
rhc show-app joblee

And get the value of Git URL from the above command. Now, add the remote url for deployment. (replace GIT_REMOTE_URL with the value you got above)

to see lots of options available. You can also get rails console, just by typing :

cd app-root/repo
bundle exec rails console RAILS_ENV=production

Postgresql Database Setup

cd app-root/repo
RAILS_ENV=production rake db:setup

Assets compilation problem
I had to run few other commands on server due to some gems/assets related problems. But you can add it to openshift deployment hooks like this example rails app, so you won’t have to manually execute it every time you deploy the app.

If you don’t want to use www domain, then you should type this instead : (and you also need to add cname record for root domain, at your domain registrar)

rhc alias-add joblee joblee.in

Note : I’ve setup naked domain so, www version of the domain is getting redirected(301) to the root domain. Not all DNS providers supports this (I’m using namecheap and I can specify openshift app url as a CNAME record for the root record) and sometimes it can cause some weird behaviours, especially if you’re using email with the domain. (read more on how it can break MX records)

git is a distributed version control system, developed by Linux Torvalds during the development/management of Linux Kernel. In other words, it’s a software, a tool, that simply keeps track of the different version of the files, If you mess up, you can easily go back to some previous (correct) version of the file. (to any commits)

The purpose of the version control system is to maintain the consistency between the changes made by different(or may just one) people on a large complex project, it allows them to contribute simultaneously in an easy way. Being distributed means – everyone has the full copy of everything – and everyone can work independently (even without any internet connection, but in case if they want to share the changes with other remote developer, the connection will be required as usual).

Why use a version control system such as git ?

There are many advantages such as –

it keeps tracks of different versions of the files in your project

it’s very fast

it also works as a backup for all your files/changes

it’s easy to manage the project if there are more than one people working on it

a number of people are already using it, so if you want to collaborate on popular open source project or in an organization then probably you might need it

it’s distributed and you got full copy of project files, so you can work offline

there are cool project hosting apps such as github that makes git even more fun

How to Learn Git ?

First of all, learn some basics from any sources, and start using it in your project. You can’t just learn git by watching videos or reading manuals – you must use it. It’s a very practical thing, even if you learn all the basics of git – you will eventually forget it unless you apply it somewhere.